


Ghost Blooms

by ThisIsMyStory_ItsALittleStrange (TeachUsSomethingPlease)



Series: L.A.D.Y.B.U.(d)G-verse [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, But It's Because They're Sort of Ghosts, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Chlomarcthaniel, Dark, F/F, F/M, Floriography, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth is Still at Large, Gen, Haunting, Hawkmoth Defeat, I Don't Even Know, Lila Rossi Bashing, Lukanette, M/M, Mild Horror, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Suicide, Supernatural Elements, They're Dead When It Begins, adrigami, ghost au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:34:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26748133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeachUsSomethingPlease/pseuds/ThisIsMyStory_ItsALittleStrange
Summary: A continuation/AU of L.A.D.Y.B.U.(d)G in which things go a little awry halfway through, because it only takes a little more for everything to come crashing down.The Miraculous crew has been dead for two years.  Marinette was gone and without her Hawk Moth picked off each and every holder bar Alix, leaving the rosy-haired girl to pick up the pieces. Now Brigitte, cinnamon roll, possible clone of Marinette, and new Ladybug, is facing exactly what Marinette once did, and the ghosts decide it's about time Collège François Dupont paid for its actions.A character study and exercise in floriography that went oversized.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Kagami Tsurugi, Juleka Couffaine/Rose Lavillant, Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Marc Anciel/Chloé Bourgeois/Nathaniel Kurtzberg
Series: L.A.D.Y.B.U.(d)G-verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937254
Comments: 17
Kudos: 65





	1. A Prologue of Sorts

**Author's Note:**

> I have never written anything like this before. I have no clue what I'm doing. I tried, but honestly, I don't expect it to be too good (if you have suggestions, please please tell me)  
> In other news, I'm horribly sidetracked but I'll probably start balancing HP properly soon. The FF.net-ers probably think I'm dead tbh. Oh well.
> 
> Warning for mentions of suicide, though not explicitly depicted (I do not know how to write that.), blood and injury (and my attempt at body horror), and ghosts doing ghostly things. Somehow, there are pinpricks of crack scattered around, but I cleaned up as much as I could to maintain tonal consistency.

Daisies have bloomed in a little plot of the park outside  Collège François Dupont for two years. It is the only place they grow in the entire expanse of green, and they have done since the incident known as the March Attacks, two years prior. These are not ordinary daisies; instead of the usual snowy white that adorns the hair of summer children, these daisies are of the variety that blooms scarlet as fresh blood. The locals often say they're a reminder of the horrors of the past, a gentle, sweet homage to the lives lost in the worst series of akuma attacks in the history of Paris.

There is one girl, however, a petite thing with rosy hair and bright blue eyes, who will swear on her life that this is untrue. She is backed up, on occasion, by a small cast of less vocal, more unsure supporters; a tall girl with similarly blue eyes and ash-blonde hair in pigtails, a quiet girl with purple-tipped black hair that falls across copper eyes, a black-haired girl with freckles and a sweet face, and a coldly silent and formally-dressed boy with neat blonde hair and dark green eyes. Despite being in the minority, they - or perhaps just the rose-haired girl - will not let their opinion fade. Perhaps it is just as well.

* * *

Collège François Dupont did not always persist in the gothic atmosphere it holds today. There was a time when the halls were wide open and free, the courtyard bright and full of laughter. But that was two years ago, and now, though the students and teachers ignore it as many do the man who sleeps aside the road, there is a gaping hole where something is horribly missing. The hole of something that was lost and could never be replaced. The hole present in those who sell their souls to advance.

It is a testament to the cold efficiency of the machines that grind their gears within the schoolyard that the students remain unaware of chasm beneath their feet, in the heart of the institution itself. But it cannot be said that things simply go unnoticed. It takes concerted effort, no matter how unconscious, to cover up the kind of changes that happened here, and eventually, the schoolchildren will awaken. For the past two years, however, every today has not been the day.

* * *

There are asphodel lilies growing in the courtyard of  Collège François Dupont . They bloom between the grasses and nobody knows how they got there. The younger students make dramatic proclamations around them, debate popular literature, regard them as a beautiful addition to a beautiful school. The older students wonder at how they missed them in their older years. A few of the more well-read touch them with sadness, remembering a time their city was torn asunder.

There are yellow roses growing outside the entrance to the Agreste home. Once upon a time, there were Pink Carnations that lined the drive, but four years ago, they died away as quickly and easily as breathing. The owner of the home tried in vain to cultivate more, before settling on honeysuckle. The plants persisted for two more years, before being destroyed in the March Attacks. Since then, the only plants that have been able to grow outside the mansion are yellow roses.

There are spiked, green plants in little pots upon the decks of a small, floating ship in the Parisian waters. Their owner doesn't know why they call to her, only that she's grown them for two years and won't stop now. The girl was quiet even before the March Attacks, and now she tends to the baby aloes, gently guiding them to blossoming, as if it's her penance. Perhaps it is. Once upon a time the air was filled with music here, but that time is long gone.

* * *

It's been just over two years since the beginning of the March Attacks. Ask a Parisian citizen what they remember of those five days and all that they speak of is death. So many things went wrong, exposing the precariousness of their situation as violently and cruelly as a wild creature. So many innocent lives lost, so much infrastructure destroyed and brought down on screaming masses, so many empty spaces where people used to tread.

It's been two years since Brigitte took up the mantle of the Rose Beetle, along with her partner, Panther. The horror of being left to wonder where their heroine was has long left, but the lingering, morbid curiosity and the tentative wonder has not quite vanished. She knows the girl who handed over the Miraculous and its inhabitant, Tikki, had to know, for she was one of the many heroes Paris could once call on. But there's just Rosy and Panther now. They say the other heroes were lost when Ladybug failed to show up on the first day.

It's been a year since Brigitte began to cop it at school. She doesn't know what she did wrong, except call someone out, but now she realises what  Félix meant when he told her about the power of humans. She escapes with him more and more frequently, as not even Alix or Juleka or Aurore can guarantee her solitude. Her days are increasingly whiled away in the library, or occasionally in  Félix 's back garden, a jungle of stacked, violet flower with petals the shape of elf's ears, roselike rainbows, the red flame of a lone tulip.

* * *

Marinette has been restless for a long time, but only now does she dare interact with the world she left behind. It's been so very long, but she remembers everything as clear as if it was yesterday as she stands on the balcony of her successor. She's used to being invisible, making no effort to be seen lest her viewer be one of those with a weaker constitution - even in death, the red still runs in river from ruined arms, down fingers or elbows in steady streams, dripping into pools on the ground wherever she walks, unable to be staunched. It has become a part of her, and by her best guess, it will be until she moves on.

Brigitte's eyes are round as she gazes upon the apparition before her, and Marinette doesn't blame her. She must appear cute, now, with the face of a young teen in comparison to Brigitte's fifteen-nearly-sixteen-years. Her skin, she knows, is lily-pale, but the rest of her visage, she's assured, is just as sweet and charming as it was in the days she truly lived. It's the mirror-like appearance, the spectral image of one's own life, that will haunt poor Brigitte. The girl is hurting, Marinette knows, and the ghost is a reminder of the consequences of following her current path.

"Here," she says gently, holding out the flowers clutched between her hands, and Brigitte obeys without thinking, reaching out and taking them with shaky hands, inspecting the blood-splashed petals. It's not a full bouquet, rather, two fresh blooms picked from a special, hidden place. Marinette got into the language of flowers a long time ago. It helped her cope, somewhat, being able to speak her mind through a flower, and she's grateful for it, even if it only buoyed her for so long. The force she was against was destructive, and she's grateful for all he had - her parents and her friends and her passions and her flowers.

Brigitte traces the flowers with her fingertips. Violet campanula blossoms, beautiful bells with spiked, fluted tips, and a rose the deep burgundy colour of wine, wrapped up with a length of herbal-scented rosemary. Brigitte doesn't know what it means, and it doesn't matter, really. What does matter is the receiving, and the giving. It's for both of them, for reassurance. When the living girl looks up, the dead one is gone, leaving the petals as clean and fresh as they were the moment they bloomed.

* * *

"She's a wonderful holder," Marinette says softly to the others. Moonlit picnics, sans food, have become a tradition, if only because they can exist then in a sphere of silence, broken only by the sounds of nature, far away from the rabble that, in the end, claimed them all. If someone were to chance upon the gathering, they would scream, but even now, no living man can see the septet of young teens, and the only sounds are the slow dripping of liquid onto grass and quiet voices.

"Alix chose well. For both of them," Adrien agrees. The former Chat Noir's posture is relaxed in a way it never could be in life, not when he was out of the suit, at least. Green eyes gleam bright as emeralds in the moonlight, slightly overgrown blonde hair blows slightly in the breeze that skips around the park, but he is no picture of joy, not while his head dangles at a near-right-angle, fringe skimming his t-shirt even as he speaks.

Marc shifts uncomfortably. He is perhaps the most ordinary looking of the ghosts sitting in their circle on the grass, the only indication of death the thin, dark stream that runs down his neck, eternally staining his shirt at the shoulder. "Why is it," he asks quietly, "That our story seems to be repeating?"

"Alix chose too well,"  Chloé says, expression concealed with a practiced inscrutability. Waving her good hand as her crushed left arm hangs limply at her side, she continues. "Brigitte is too much like Marinette. A good ladybug, sure, but also the perfect target."

"She needs help," Kagami grumbles, voice faraway. The ghost is permanently soaked and blue to the lips, and her voice always sounds as if it was echoing through water, but she continues nontheless. "Marc and  Chloé are right, we will have a repeat of March if we do not do something."

"How?" Nathaniel asks. Like Kagami, his voice is distorted, though his by a lack of air belied by the flowering purple bruising around his throat. "We're ghosts. Nobody did a thing when we were alive. What happens now we're dead?"

"We - we can appear! And we can touch things, right?" Adrien says eagerly. "We can still do stuff, right?"

"Catboy is right," Marc agrees, drawing a few snickers. "We have a lot of tools at our disposal. All that's left to do is… whatever ghosts do."

"Haunt the peasants," Nathaniel says, nudging  Chloé .

Chloé snorts. "I don't say that, but whatever, Tomato, you're right. I say we haunt them. Make their lives fear. Marc can write up a complex story behind it all - if we even need one."

"Will it work?" Kagami enquires doubtfully.

"It's all we've got," Marinette points out.

"Exactly." Luka, who has been silent the entire time, finally speaks up, fingers idly picking at the steel rod that sits squarely through his chest. "And I'll be damned if we don't at least try to stop this happening again."


	2. The Beginning

Marinette doesn't know why they linger after so long. They say that people find it hard to move on without closure, and maybe they're right in life, but there should be far more ghosts wandering around Paris if it was true in death. And yet they're alone. Kagami believes it has to do with being Miraculous holders, that the energies around them changed, somehow, allowing them to persist. It's not an amazing theory, but it's the best they've got, far better than Adrien's, which has to do with heart's desires and apples.

They've experimented for a long time, and they know their boundaries. They don't tire, don't sleep, don't eat, but they can't lift anything they couldn't in life, and nor can they stave away the marks of their death. Marinette's wrists will bleed forever, as will Marc's jugular. Adrien's neck will never heal nor set, always tending to flop over with motion when righted, and  Chloé 's arm is permanently crippled. Kagami will never dry out, never warm up, and Nathaniel will be flushed in the face, pale at the fingertips, and gasping in speech forevermore. Luka's predicament is the worst (or the best, depending on how mature the comparer is); he can remove the length of metal that ended his life, but doing so causes fountains of ghostly blood, not to mention the sickening sight of destroyed viscera and bone within the chest cavity.

The one thing nobody can wrap their head around, though, is the flowers.

It started at the spot where the Dupain-Chengs spread Marinette's ashes, a cosy little nook of the Parisian park she so often frequented with her friends, and spread with time to everywhere the ghosts walked. As Marinette's area bloomed with beauty unknown to the recipient, so too did the courtyard of their old school whisper regrets and death, the outline of the Agreste mansion quietly announce betrayal. They kept showing up - perhaps it was, as  Chloé thought, because they were all anchored to Marinette, the girl who spent her final months buried in flowering messages - and eventually, to the ghosts, they became a part of death, a side-effect of their condition; every spot they assigned meaning to, flowers dotted the ground like stars.

It is with that knowledge that they walk into  Collège François Dupont to begin their plan. Flowers are not creepy, nor frightening or ominous, but they do not grow from walls, nor carpets or wooden floors. In any case, they know Plagg's new chosen,  Félix , is versed enough in the language of flowers to infer their meaning. He is aloof and cold, the sort who pushes people away, though Adrien spends huge amounts of time drifting after him, protective yet critical; but he is calm and serious out of the suit, and the students will turn to him in crisis. He will be able to keep a level head in the haunting, and he will be the one to relay the message of doom placed down by the long-deceased students. A herald of destruction. It's not irony, but it's sweet.

* * *

As expected, the school reacts with confusion more than fear to the sudden arrival of the plants, even as people struggle to comprehend how they could become so physically entrenched overnight. It's beautiful, in any case; hallways lined with spiked green aloe and tall, peach flowers in stacks, asphodel exploding from the grounds into the walls, star-shaped cypress flowers adorning the classroom Marinette's former yearmates now inhabit. Brigitte walks into the school with wide eyes and remembers the flowers from the girl on the balcony, wonders if this is some kind of beautiful tribute. Aurore turns to a quiet, pensive  Félix in confusion, but receives little more answer than thoughtful hums. Juleka sees the familiar plants lining the corridors and wonders. Alix walks into her classroom, recognizes the blooms, and remembers.

They move on to what Marc calls 'soft haunting' next. It's simple things; Kagami lurks by the sports field, moves around the foils she once wielded, crosses them and, along with Adrien, leaves wet footprints of battle on concrete flooring. Adrien himself lingers by the school gates, closes them at inopportune times, fences people in and forces them to climb fences. Marc moves around stacks of papers, lets them drop to the floor or mix up or fly away; occasionally lets them go missing completely.  Chloé sits in the library, rearranges the books, drops the ones on empires and betrayals and abuse and pain as people walk past. Nathaniel rearranges the leaves in the courtyard into images, sketches vague pictures of old friendships on chalkboards. Luka messes with the school intercom, removes key objects from the music room, quietly shuffles CDs around in players, switching bright things for sadness. Marinette lingers in her old classroom, placing significant books on desks, dropping things as  Chloé does at opportune moments.

It stagnates for a day like this, before they agree to raise the bar, just a little. Kagami stabs a foil a foot into the grass and leaves it there. Adrien tapes the gates shut. Marc misplaces the fundraiser files under a desk.  Chloé  begins throwing books rather than dropping them, with no regard for safety. Nathaniel leaves a mural of a crying Ladybug in chalk in the central courtyard. Luka replaces the school bell with the most despondent chord progression he can find. Marinette rips a page out of a poetry book and glues it to Lila's desk.

By the third day of this, the school knows something is up, though they don't know what. Brigitte walks through the door and is accosted halfway to homeroom by  Félix , the older boy grabbing her by the shoulder as a confused Aurore looks on, pinning a combination of rosemary and white clover flower to her shirt with a brusque warning not to take it off. He has the same combination at his pocket, replacing his usual aconite. As far as Brigitte's grade is concerned, it's just the outcasts being weird again, and probably causing the strangeness. Brigitte knows better - if  Félix , perceptive, secret-identity-guesser  Félix is worried, she'll listen. Juleka wonders. Alix suspects.

* * *

Brigitte is curled up in her bed, crying, when she's next visited. As she runs out of steam, slowly but surely, and her sniffles subside, the quiet breathing slowly becomes evident. She doubts ghosts need to breathe, but it's strikingly humanizing, and much more preferable to rolling over to a perfectly silent face looming over her. Marinette doesn't say anything this time. She really doesn't have to. She just sits down next to her successor and places a hand on her shoulder, rubbing gently. She's solid, but at the same time immaterial, having no temperature, just existence. Brigitte leans over onto her lap, and if the wetness that smears across her skin and clothes is a bother, she doesn't mention it.

* * *

The school is haunted, Principal Damocles decides. At first, a good proportion of the school populace maintained it had something to do with the troublemakers, Alix, Juleka, Brigitte, Aurore, and  Félix , but doubts it now. He should have doubted it from the beginning, really, because what ordinary person could force the roots of flowers to grow through solid concrete?

He looks around at this office, the doors adorned with rue, the walls with yellow roses. Perhaps he made a mistake; why else would his workplace be so different to the others?

He guesses who the ghosts may be, but doesn't want to believe it.

After all, it can't be. The school is innocent in this.

Right?

* * *

Alix no longer wears her skates to school, instead religiously carrying about a white umbrella as if it's a sword. Aurore clutches  The Revolution like a shield. Juleka wears a guitar pick around her neck on a string, a hole pierced through the wide end to the let the thread through. Brigitte twines rosemary through her hair.  Félix is something akin to his normal misanthropic self, really, though stiffer, somewhat.

They arrive to school together. Aurore has already begun to compile a list of the events leading up to the March Attacks at  Félix 's insistent behest, but that doesn't make things any less scary for them. There's a cloud of worry above them, though Brigitte feels a sort of vicious sympathy towards the other members of the school's population. They don't know what's coming to them. Her feelings about it are mixed.

It's not even half an hour into the day when Brigitte realises Marinette is angry on her behalf. They can throw accusations all they like, but Brigitte is not lying when she says she has no idea the desk collapsed like that. She wonders how long Marinette has waited to try this. It doesn't stop at that, either; Mlle. Bustier scolds Alix halfway through the lesson, and the moment Juleka and Brigitte are dragged in two heavy books are physically hurled from opposite sides of the room towards the errant teacher. It's not the first time things have been thrown, but it's the first time it's happened openly, in front of people's faces instead of behind their backs. Even with the clear signs, there had been doubters, but now…

Félix says his class was clear of paranormal activity. It makes sense, really; there's nothing there to obviously provoke the ghost girl - ghost teens, if  Félix 's suspicions, in accordance with Aurore's five-page report, are anything to go by. Resentment, perhaps, but no open provocation. The rest of the school seems to tentatively believe Mlle. Bustier's rambling report, especially after they find the image of a still, empty-eyed cat etched into the concrete by a power-washer. No student there has that sort of artistic ability, not anymore.

* * *

There are flowers twined around the chair legs, now. Brigitte's first glance is towards Lila's desk, where she sees a branching plant, fractal-like splitting in the stems ending in small puffs of colour, the same bright yellow as lemons. The stalks are growing from the desk, the seat of the chair, the ground around, everywhere. She's an anomaly; most of the class is surrounded by bursts of bright violet, royal purple, and pale, delicate lavender, large purple flowers with densely folded leaves opening wide as they sprout from the hard ground below. It's beautiful, but she knows enough, now, what with  Félix 's muttered ramblings, that the carnations have a meaning entirely different to their beauty. Capriciousness, unreliability.

Her own desk is adorned with the same flowers she received the first time she met the former Ladybug's ghost; campanula, burgundy roses, both in full bloom. Alix's workstation sports large white daisies; Juleka's rosemary and a sort of flattened, pink-and-white rose with a golden yellow centre. The thing that Brigitte notes most curiously, though, is the presence of flowers around Mlle. Bustier's desk. They are awfully familiar; the only time, in fact, Brigitte can remember seeing such bright yellow roses, is in the surrounds of the Agreste mansion, in the days after Adrien Agreste went missing.

* * *

"And yet they don't let up. How utterly stupid of them, the trash,"  Chloé sneers.

"Catboy II is onto us," Nathaniel notes.

"All of them are onto us," Kagami corrects him. "I think this is a highly advantageous situation, if I'm honest."

"She's right," Marc says, with just a hint of smugness. "We've got them acclimatized to harmless things. Now…"

"I hope they close the school when we're done," Marinette says coldly. "It's past repair by now."

"They'll have to," Luka agrees. "Unless they want to deal with us for eternity."

"Do we start giving out warnings?" Nathaniel asks. "I know the flowers mean something, but - we've been sort of general with everything, right?"

"I think we're up to that point," Marc replies, flicking through a set of hastily scribbled notes. "If we hold out for - another day or two? And then we start one of the stories…"

"I like the Death of a Lady, myself," Adrien murmurs, peering over Marc's shoulder. "But I guess the Cliffhangers works too…"

"No reason we can't go through with both, one after the other," Kagami notes, reasonable as always. "If we began with Cliffangers, moved through to Boxed In, and finished with Death of a Lady, since it's the most complex and probably the most confronting haunting, and flows on from the others fairly well."

"Once again, Ice Dragon wins over our emotional souls," Chloé snips, though without malice.

"We start if one of them says a trigger phrase, right?" Marinette asks, and as the others nod in agreement, she smiles slightly. "Good. Let's give them hell. It's been too long."


	3. The Middle

"I think I'm being targeted," Lila says tremulously from the middle of the courtyard, and the rest of the school seems to turn to her, even though she's only talking to Alya and Rose.

"Really? Oh my gosh, girl, why do you think that?" Alya gasps, already taking notes.

Lila does put on a good show, Félix notes cynically, watching the girl widen her eyes, force tears to form, make her lower lip tremble. A shame every word she says is inconsistent at best.

"I think it's because I was friends with Ladybug!" Lila wails. "And now someone's trying to hurt me! You've seen the books!"

Alix looks like she's about to note how very stupid the entire idea as for the whole school to hear, but is beaten to it by the sound of something ripping. As the school looks around in sync, Félix wonders if Brigitte really understands what they're dealing with, how many people could get hurt, if the ghosts, spirits, whatever they are, turn out more malevolent than he thinks they are. It doesn't matter at that moment, though, really, because the school is busy gawping at the dress laying in a puddle on the ground, a dress with the sleeves ripped off at the middle of the forearm. It's cold in the courtyard, he realises.

Perhaps it's time for Brigitte to really know how he is. In the midst of this, it's the least he can do.

* * *

Aurore says the dress was the last one ever designed by the elusive SoupCroissant3A07, an anonymous fashion blogger that stopped posting, presumed dead or missing, in the March Attacks. It's all Félix needs to know, really, though he listens nonetheless as Aurore expounds her theories, tiny white fuzzballs wrapped around her pigtails. Baby's breath picked straight from the ground around her chair - they were the only ones whose surrounds were devoid of the marks of unreliability, of turncoats. There's no way he would wear his own - Bird of Paradise are the most gaudy thing he's seen, and he already has enough aconite to poison a small city - but it comforts him somewhat to see his friend (is she a friend? He can't remember when this happened, she was but an acquaintance when this all began) marked as an innocent. To be spared, even.

Brigitte gapes openly at him as he explains the full situation to her, including his identity. Her face is all disbelief as they stand in an isolated corner, and she refuses, even after he guessed her secret weeks ago, to even entertain the idea until he slips into his Panther persona, and _good Lord_ , does her face light up. He remembers Panther has been casually flirting with Rose Beetle just as his predecessor did his counterpart, though in a different, more subtle way. Perhaps she does mean something to him, really. That's not the point, though, the point is that the day is finishing just four hours after Lila's declaration and yet Mlle. Bustier's class is already near the point of hysterics.

It continues through to the next day, flying books and long-sleeved clothes with the wrists ripped open or off, doors opening at inopportune moments, things being knocked over as if the girl is walking around Brigitte's classroom, and maybe she is. It seems that each class is subject to some form of haunting, but it's gentle compared to dictionaries being thrown through the air, chairs being kicked halfway across the room…

* * *

"It's Brigitte's fault! She took my pens!" Lila cries, and while Mlle. Bustier turns her disappointed gaze (oh, so disappointed. And somehow it hurts despite its nature, despite the emptiness behind it. Always hurting) at the dark-haired girl, Juleka sees Max bracing as if he expects to be hurt. He's the only intelligent one out of them, really, the only one who's really and truly made the link between the classroom occurrences and the multiple instances of thesauruses, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, even a chair, once, flying across the room. But it's not enough. It will never be enough. Most days she feels her lot will never be enough, and Max doesn't even seem to bother worrying about Brigitte, only his own safety. They can hurt, the lot of them. Feel what she feels. She will never get her curse-breaker back, nor her brother. She's lost it all. They can side with who they like, and she will enjoy the consequences.

Max is right, in a way. There are no dangerously moving books, the flowers do not spring from the ground to throttle them, Alix does not break anyone's skull with her umbrella. But there's something else. Sad sniffling.

"Don't cry, Brigitte!" Mlle. Bustier scolds. "This is your own fault."

Brigitte mumbles something.

"Speak up!" Ivan jeers. "Can't say anything?"

Brigitte straightens her shoulders slightly, looking up at the others around her. "That's not me," she says, and it's indisputable, because her voice, though quiet, is even and almost completely calm… and as she speaks, the sniffling continues.

"But… who…" Mylène glances around the room. "Nobody's crying."

The sniffs only become louder, and then Kim whips around in shock. "Who's that?!"

There are footsteps, heavy, clumsy footsteps, heading down the break in the desks, and the crying noise is accompanying them.

"It's just the wind," Max breathes.

"It's not," Alix says, voice breaking. "It's really not."

"What else could it be?" Max asks, borderline hysterical. "Nothing real makes these noises!"

"You live in a city guarded by magic superheroes!" Alix cries. "How hard is it to believe in ghosts?!"

"It's not ghosts!" Lila shrieks back. "I told you! I've been threatened! Someone's trying to hurt me!"

Rose squeaks, hunching over in her chair, and for a moment, Juleka feels a shred of sympathy for her former girlfriend. And then it's gone. Rose chose them over her. Perhaps it was naivete, perhaps not. The bed is made.

"It's gone silent," Kim whispers, and the class stops, turning towards him with wide eyes. "But…"

The abrupt click of the door causes both Rose and Mylène to scream as it's pushed open, the handle turning from the inside, and then footsteps are running away down the corridor, and the class is left alone, the pen situation forgotten.

* * *

Aurore is a real presenter. Anything she presents is the facts, not gossip like the Ladyblog. She documents everything, preserves her integrity above all else, and if the price to pay is being relegated to the group assigned the label 'Troublemaker', she'll deal with it. Alix is intense, Juleka is really quiet, Brigitte is hurting, and Félix is frosty, but they're hers, and she wouldn't trade them in for the fallen rabble of the school if you paid her. She has a hard time believing it when Mylène Haprèle runs screaming out of the bathroom, babbling about voices and ghosts and empty cubicles, but she's nothing if not thorough, and she takes notes dutifully as the dreadlocked girl's logorrhoea conveniently provides all the information she could ever need.

"It was a girl," Mylène whimpers, standing in the middle of the courtyard and shaking while Rose wraps an arm around her and tries in vain to comfort her. "I was just washing my hands, and I heard a voice! It was like they were having a conversation, but I only caught half of it. It - she - was begging somebody, asking them to stop, what they had to gain. She - she said the other person was hurting her - and then I went over to open the stall door, 'cause it was unlocked - and it was empty!"

"It could have just been a person outside the block on a phone," Max says desperately. "Couldn't it?"

"B-but - the footsteps!" Mylène wails, and the courtyard is filled with whispers, as even if the students hadn't been present in the class where it began, everyone heard the invisible person's footsteps as they ran outside the classrooms.

"What is it?"

"It can't be true!"

"I'm scared…"

"How is this possible?!"

"Fools," Félix says idly, not bothering to keep his voice down. "How hard is it to see? We're haunted, plain and simple. Honestly, everyone knows, and denial isn't going to change a thing…"

"You think it's true then?" Aurore whispers.

He raises his eyebrows. "You carry a random book around like it's your firstborn child, Beauréal."

* * *

The girl's toilets have been off-limits for a long time. Ivan wonders aloud how it's possible, for the ghost to haunt their classrooms and the bathroom at the same time. Brigitte, from the notes she's gained from the elder students, thinks Marinette is being helped, to simulate being in two places at once; in any case, she was just fine with avoiding the bathroom with the rest of the girls. Once a day or so, a brave soul goes in, and every time, without fail, they stumble out white as a sheet with a tale to tell, whether it be stories of inconsolable crying or panicked argument or teary affirmations.

"Just stop lying, please! Nobody will hate you, just stop!"

"I - I have friends. I can fight you."

"I - I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm loved. I'm okay."

"Don't! Please!"

"…I want it to end."

The last was whispered to a shaken upperclassman - upperclasswoman, really - just when the girl thought things were okay. Just when she thought the silence was an indication of emptiness. She repeats the words to the entire school and all of a sudden the students realise they're dealing with a honest-to-goodness problem, because this girl was either murdered or killed herself and aren't they the most dangerous type of apparition?

The bathroom door is ringed with asphodel and rosemary and cypress flowers, a gate of pure white and fragrant green and bloody scarlet, and if that doesn't set off the drips of blood on the floor Brigitte doesn't know what does.

At first, the teachers try to say that perhaps it was the kind of accident that happens, sometimes, with young teenaged girls, but far too many people are disgusted by that idea, and anyway, there's nobody conspicuously leaking in the entire school, and yet the drips appear even as the janitor soaks them up. The bathroom tiles, the hallway nearby - and the voice, the crying, it's not limited to the toilets, anymore, it's leaking out, into the room.

After lunch but before they're dismissed, Brigitte manages to escape the classroom, just for a moment, under the pretence of grabbing a water bottle. Lila is once again confidently spinning a tale about Brigitte, and she just wants to get away from it all… but she can't, not under Mlle. Bustier's eagle eye, not when every second outside counts against her alibi, so she downs her water and walks back to the classroom door.

It's open. There's a trail of blood leading inside.

Brigitte ignores it and steps inside, and there's a subtle, collective 'whoosh' as a dozen heads snap around to her.

"No…" Kim whispers. "No, it can't be…"

Juleka is openly clinging to Alix, face buried in her shoulder as the rosy-haired girl stares stoically forward, crying silently.

"Wh - what?" Brigitte asks.

"Y - you came in a minute ago," Nino says, voice strange.

Brigitte looks to her seat.

_Oh._

There are circles of deep, dark crimson leading to her seat, all along the clean floor, and all Brigitte can think of is that if she was really the girl currently seated, head bowed, in her seat, then she would be dead now, because she's bleeding out and her class doesn't care. She steps inside a little further, slowly, and the class watches her with sharp eyes, twitchy as rabbits.

"There's blood on the floor," she whispers, and, for once, they all believe her, heads snapping to attention as, almost like magic, the room is suddenly full of the stench of iron.

"Oh, Lord," Mylène squeaks, expression begging. "What's going on?"

But she already knows, in part.

"It's the ghost," Alya breathes, grabbing her phone and recording the scene.

"S-she has a name," Alix says quietly, and the class spares her a glance as her voice, for the second time that week and the third time in forever, cracks with emotion.

Lila, who is an ashy grey colour, still manages to summon up her usual bravado. "Who are you? What do you want?"

A head lifts, watery eyes with all the colour and beauty of bluebells stare out at the class, wrists cut to ribbons are exposed, rivers of blood dripping onto the desk, painfully loud in the silence. Brigitte watches in mixed satisfaction and sadness as a dozen eyes widen in shock at the young ghost, unchanged from their last memories yet irreparably altered. Pale as the asphodel slowly blooming around her, just quickly enough to be visible, freckles standing out horribly against bloodless skin, smooth skin torn and slashed, blue-black hair - tipped with the same awful red, Brigitte realises with a jolt.

Lips part as the teenagers, eyes fixed on the form by their own great disbelief, watch on with horrified faces. It's only one word, uttered sadly and brokenly and quiet as is humanly possible, and yet Brigitte hears it clearly over the beat of what she later realises is her own pounding heart.

"Why?"

And then the girl is gone, but the blood, the only part of her with any temperature, hot and damp and stomach-churningly real, remains.

It's a long time before Brigitte moves from the doorway, a long time before anyone can bring themselves to do anything but stare, mulling over their own thoughts.

* * *

Lila is white.

"I'm… Lila? I didn't spill coffee on your homework? Lila?"

The air is cold, the hallway is unusually dark, and Lila's gang is petrified.

"G-guys?" Brigitte squeaks, because not only is she scared, she's worried. If it's an akuma…

They stand there at a sort of mutual checkmate for a long time before someone comes down the hallway. To Brigitte's immense relief, it's Félix, and to his credit, he barely raises an eyebrow at the scene. "Brigitte? Are you coming?"

"O-oh! Yes!" she squeaks, but doesn't move from her spot.

He tilts his head. "To come, you would have to move your legs."

She goes to move but it blocked by Alya and Rose, and Félix sneers. "Really, girls? You all wonder why I seem to hate people so much. Petty, cruel, naïve, moronic, slavish… and those are the good points. Good grief. Come on, Brigitte."

They don't seem to want to move, but he makes a mocking 'turn around' sign with his hand, and they both blanch. Brigitte wonders how he's done it.

And then he tips his head to a spot behind her, and Brigitte realises, turning around, suddenly aware of the noise of drips on the ground. She's floating there, just behind her, expression vaguely mournful but otherwise blank.

"Thank you," Brigitte whispers, and Marinette's lips twitch as she watches the duo go.

Unbeknownst to Brigitte, when the ghost girl turn back to the gang as they stand petrified in the corridor, her soft smile turns into something vicious and vindictive. They do say, after all, that playing Break the Cutie is a terrible idea. Bright blue eyes meet sky blue, meet golden brown, meet hazel, meet green. A sudden flurry of movement is met with screams as the ghost leaps towards them; but she's gone before she can even touch them and in her place is a single crown shaped, golden-yellow flower, floating to the ground.

It's left on the ground and Félix laughs aloud as he and Aurore chance upon it the next day, and the entire school turns to stare at him as the words form vindictive from his lips.

_Bird's foot trefoil._

_Revenge._


	4. Chapter 4

The lights suddenly turn off, the electrical cables cut clean through, a foil left on the ground next to a puddle of water containing the ripped-off petals of a white rose. Water drips from the ceiling, purposeful footsteps leave wet tracks on the floor, blades leave angry scratches on doors and desks.

Accusations of murder are written in permanent marker on the walls by invisible hands, appearing in the seconds it takes to turn one's back, aloe blossoming beneath them. Stories, horribly familiar, are printed on sheets of white paper, the lives of the living described in a little too much detail for comfort, hopes and dreams and lies.

Doors slam shut, lock themselves down amidst panicked breathing. The gates swing closed while people are still trying to move through them, windows open themselves to the sound of footsteps and heavy landings on the ground below. Some people swear they see flickers of green and gold as they're pushed down.

The ghost of a young, pale girl stains clothing, tears at it, leaves eerily symbolic designs lying around with the sleeves torn out. The scent of baking drifts through the schoolground, only for students to discover burnt or bloody pastries lying around the hallways, discarded and still smoking.

Flowers coat the courtyard in a mural of sorts, sketching out the image of a ruined Paris. The walls are covered in graffiti, depicting long-gone heroes, sometimes in happiness, sometimes in pain. Triplet stripes of bloody red, bright golden yellow, and vivid, flourishing green appear on the walls to the sound of gasping breaths.

Soft, barely-there music echoes through the air, if you know where to look for it, familiar melodies and new, painful songs. Instruments move about, footsteps echo down the corridor, following trails of darkening crimson. A slight shadow seems to linger in certain places, at certain rooms, behind certain people.

Magazines are thrown through the air folded like darts, accompanied by pins and thumbtacks and earrings and other sharp objects. Untied friendship bracelets and necklaces hang from trees like nooses. Messages are written onto lockers in pink and red, I'm Sorry and I'm Lonely and I Love You and I Tried I Tried I Tried…

* * *

"There's seven," Max says in disbelief. "Seven clear themes, seven clear patterns."

"Seven ghosts," Kim repeats, similarly unbelieving. "What do seven ghosts want with our school?"

Nino flicks his eyes towards Lila behind his glasses, raising his eyebrows.

"But what could they want with her?" Ivan asks. "She's nice."

"Marinette was having a lot of problems with her before she - you know," Nino says, coughing slightly.

"Yeah, but - Dupain-Cheng is one ghost," Kim points out. "What about the other six? What do they want from  Collège François Dupont ?"

"It's not just the school," Max says, voice clipped. "Our classroom experiences much higher levels of paranormal activity."

"So what do they want with us?" Ivan demands. The others have no answer.

* * *

They say Marinette Dupain-Cheng haunts the bathrooms, and the hallways, and her old classroom. Sometimes, if you look closely, you can see her behind the quiet figure of Brigitte, someone just like her, protective, sad, silent. One day Alya goes too far and pushes the living girl against the lockers. A flower falls to the ground as she leaves, golden and shaped like the headdress of a king. The next thing anyone in the school knows, Nino has walked in on the girl pale and screaming in the corner of the locker room, hysterically recounting a tale of psychotic ghosts and needles and lips being stitched together. The floor, he realises with a shiver of revulsion and disbelief, is scattered with silver knives and scissors stained deep red, speckled with droplets of liquid of the same colour. Alya's face is stained with splashes the colour of wine, and as she looks beseechingly up at him, a scratch below her lips weeps scarlet. He stares at the scene before him and wonders if the ghost that caused this is really the girl he used to know.

They say Nathaniel Kurtzburg haunts a quiet spot in the classroom the art class used to meet up, and roams the school by night. Nobody sees more of him than a flash of crimson as he leaves behind image after image that speaks for him. Max wonders, one day, if the world is truly any worse without the missing faces in the class. It's a purely analytical thing, sure, but a golden grown floats to the surface of his desk nevertheless. Suddenly, there are images surrounding the boy, loaded onto his computer and sketched into his book and on every hallway he ever walked down. Faces appear on his glasses, scratched in, faces he used to know. He's plagued by words, too. Heartless. Robotic. Cruel. Cold. Traitor. Unworthy. Ivan finds the boy having a breakdown in front of the perfect image of a winged horse, emblazoned with the caption, 'Pegasus is not real'. It's beautiful, but its hooves are just a little too sharp, its eyes a little too close to red, its posture just a little too broken down. He wonders what's wrong, but does not ask. Max would never tell him anyway.

They say Adrien Agreste haunts the surrounds of the school, the doorways that lead to the outside world. He is an invisible enigma, present in glimpses of emerald and nothing more, a barrier and something more. He stops you leaving the room, that he blocks you from entering through the school gates, that he can stop the rain. He comes across a young child being harassed by upperclassmen one day - there's a gleam of colour and a golden flower falls through the air, landing sadly on the pavement. It's stomped into the ground and the next day the janitor has to be called to rescue a number of errant children trapped in a classroom. They're white as sheets when they escape, one of the more timid ones frantically recalling the incident for anyone who'll listen. How empty the room seemed, how every door they approached slammed shut and locked, how windows snapped closed, how silent everything was.

In time,  Collège François Dupont  learns what the flowers mean. In time, the students learn to avoid those gifted with them, even as Alix and  Félix laugh with all the frost of the Arctic. In time, the students learn, even as Brigitte and Juleka and Aurore slowly become taboo, that the ghosts' anger is insatiable.

* * *

Several students have to be sent home, terrified, crying, green to the gills. The incident is the first time they've seen a ghost other than that of Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Caline Bustier, according to Mlle. Mendeleiev, called the incident with the female ghost 'disturbing', but somehow this is so much worse.  Félix of the grade above the affected class suspects all seven ghosts may have been in the room at the time of the haunting, and personally, Principal Damocles agrees.

Even hours later, the sight hangs in Brigitte's mind like some sort of awful chandelier. It had been a normal lesson and despite the chill of death that hung over the school, the students were trying to make the most of their day, making conversation and chattering to each other when they were meant to be working. Lila Rossi is halfway through an anecdote about her time in Achu when the teacher realises too late that something was wrong. The windows had been opened wide to let some air in. The operative word being had. Upon closer inspection, courtesy of  Mylène, it becomes apparent that each and every one was bolted shut.

Despite their characteristic obliviousness (hosting and harassing two generations of Ladybugs came to mind), the class easily picks up on their teacher's stiff, skittish countenance, the eyes darting around the room, the face a little too grey. It didn't take too long before the class is almost completely silent, save for the teacher's efforts to lecture them. And then Mlle. Bustier asks a question, a hand goes up, and the teacher calls on the person without thinking.

"Marseilles,  Mademoiselle  Bustier."

He shouldn't have been sitting there. He was missing, presumed dead. He was long gone. And yet he is sitting in the seat Lila had begged them to keep clear, for his memory, please. Sitting there, plain as day, taking notes, answering questions.

Around him, Brigitte notes, are the same star-shaped flowers that have long resided on the walls of the classroom, twined up the doorframe to the bathrooms. The plant of death. Next to his notebook sits a small bunch of white carnations wrapped in the leaves of a plant she doesn't recognize, a long fern-like strand of green.

"…Yes, that's correct," the teachers whispers, because what else can be said?

The rest of the class is staring and he just sits there, back ramrod straight, diligently jotting down his answer in the notebook.

"…Adrien?" Nino asks, and despite everything, the boy's eyes are wet. The ghost looks up, motions slow and graceful, and looks at the living, face inviting them, silently, to ask their questions.

"…Why…why are you here?" Rose squeaks out.

The boy furrows his brow. "This is my classroom. This is my seat."

"What's with the flowers?" Max blurts. "It's always flowers."

Adrien looks so familiar, so fresh and just the same as the day he went missing, right down to his slight obliviousness. "Flowers? Oh!" He grabs the bunch next to his notebook, turning them over gently in his hand, head bowing to carefully inspect them. Was he always so awkward? It's been such a long time, they realise. "These? Eh…"

"Are they for someone?" Sabrina asks, curiosity overtaking fear, and the boy's face flushes.

"For her," he whispers, and holds out the flowers next to him. There's a moment of mild surprise, and Lila's eyes widen minutely in genuine shock and confusion, before her face is schooled back into simpering devotion and she reaches out, fingers wrapping around tied stems.

He lets go and there's the sound of something whizzing through the air, the noise of something being cut, and the flowers are falling to the floor, cut off at the stems as a sword clatters to the floor. The silence is deafening, and so many people look like they want to scream, but their throats are closed because in the moment the carnations were beheaded, they both jerked back and -

They had often wondered what happened to their classmates, in the days after the Attacks, when everything was chaos and nothing was certain. Some favoured missing, some favoured dead, some said they ran away when they couldn't take it anymore, but nobody wanted to find out like this. It might even have been fine if things had started like this, but it seemed fine, he was fine, and it's like watching a murder, it really is, with the wide green eyes eyes and the way he snapped his head up to look and the sound of wet crunching and grinding and the soft gasp of shock and the neck bent near double to the side and the pale hair brushing his shoulder, oh god -

"Oh…" he whispers, voice agonizingly normal against the backdrop of violently misplaced body parts, swaying slightly in his seat for a brief moment, and then his hand is gently scrunching in his hair, an arm is tugging and that noise of blood and bone is back and he's yanking his head back into place -

And then Mylène opens her mouth and  screams .

* * *

Phrases drift down the halls, just audible over the tense chatter that defines the college these days. I told you to ignore them, they're just ridiculous. Standing up is brave, not cruel. We're here for you. Friends forever this time. I think I love you. I failed, but it won't happen again. Maybe I fell from the high road.

Three figures, sitting together on the stairs, one writing, one drawing, one reading, leaning on each other. Words are exchanged in whispers, kisses pressed against foreheads and hands. The next moment, they're gone.

Invisible footsteps, the clash of metal, spirited laughter. Gasps of surprise and teasing words, admiring praise, humility and bashfulness. The pound of feet on the ground, fervent declarations, moments of stillness.

Midnight blue and cerulean, music from nowhere, swirling patterns in the dust on the floor. Supportive murmurs, grace from nowhere, quiet chuckles. Near-invisible hands interlaced, scrappy imitations, helpless giggling.

There may be a story they're keeping to, but it's all real.

* * *

The words change, are added to, become louder and more life-like. Maybe I'm not perfect, but I'm still a queen. It's okay, I took them on once, I'll do it again. Maybe they weren't real, but we are. Pound it. I get nervous, but I'll do it. This time it'll be okay. Well, this is just purr-fect.

Footsteps, leaping from balconies and window-ledges, the twin laughter of a synchronized team. Joking laughter, exasperated cries, determined shouts.

Excited gasps, encouragements yelled to the sky. Blurs of colour - scarlet and vermillion and lime and gold and jet and teal, a rainbow. Gentle reminiscing. Moments caught on camera in the dead of night.

A black-haired girl and a rose-haired one wrapped in a tight embrace. Violet and turquoise together for the first time on forever. Blonde hair and frantic scribbling. Affirmations and laughter.

In the midst of screams of terror, trapped and crying living, flowers that herald doom and draw the frightened eye of those around, they heal.

* * *

Juleka looks like she's about to be sick, and nobody can blame her, not really, because even their Principal looks ill. The scene playing out in front of them is surreal and it's almost like the ghosts don't recognize the people around them but that doesn't make it any less horrific. There's all the tells of life and coherent speech and solid hands and none of the creepiness that belied the other instances of haunting, but there are also voices so different to life and distorted bodies and so, so much blood.

"Why would you take it out, you blue-haired idiot!"  Chloé shrieks, throwing her arms in the air, the crippled one flopping down with a slight crackling noise almost immediately as she places the other hand to her temple. She and Marinette are absolutely coated with fine drops of fresh crimson blood, and the smell of their companion's gore is strong enough that it can be picked up in all its sickening, visceral glory from the very edges of the courtyard, where the teachers are herding the younger students, trying to spare them the sight.

" Chloé has a point," Marinette says, wiping her face and leaving a smear of brownish-red across her freckled cheeks, only for the clear spots to be marked once again in a matter of seconds. She sighs in resignation and clutches her wrists instead, darker, thicker liquid leaking out down delicate fingers and dripping onto the concrete, sprays the colour of red tulips overtaken by wine.

"It was an accident!" he protests, half indignant, half mortified, and Juleka grabs onto Alix's arm, nails digging in deep. "I didn't mean for it to come out. Come on, you saw, Mari!"

"There's a reason we made you keep it in,"  Chloé grouses. "Every time you take it out you make a massive mess - and that stuff looks like it's going to come out, too, which is just - ew."

The stuff the former Bourgeois heiress speaks of happens to be the jagged edges of smashed-apart ribs, the pulpy edges of a lung, and the remains of a heart, the edges around a ripped-away, missing chamber ragged, almost fluffy-looking. Someone in the corner throws up as the boy in question shifts slightly, turning around and glancing about himself, not bothering with the crowd of morbidly fascinated teens standing around him. "Speaking of, where is it?"

"It went that way," Marinette says blandly, pointing over her shoulder. "I should have known playing punch-tag was a bad idea. We're never listening to Adrien again."

"Luka, I believe this is it?"

The voice is unfamiliar to most of the school, formal and calm, strangely wet and echoing, and the student body stares as the being dubbed #7, the enigma built around swords and protectiveness, walks over carrying a massive rod of metal in her hands. Despite the blue tinge, her features are clearly East Asian, and Brigitte remembers, for a moment, walking past a similar face on the way to school as she prepared to spar with a familiar figure. To her right,  Félix watches with practices impassivity as Aurore frantically scribbles out an eyewitness account. The girl stops next to Marinette, and water mingles with blood on the ground, endless drips from short black hair and soaked clothes as she holds out the pole in her hands.

"Oh, yeah, thanks, 'Gami," the elder Couffaine smiles and takes it off her, and a moment later there's a loud cry of shock and disgust as he casually pushes it through the gaping hole in his chest. Several teachers go pale, though Mlle. Mendeleiev looks vaguely fascinated.

"Guys? Are we still - oh."

It's a pair of boys that pop out of a door at the side, moving at a run, screeching to a halt as they happen across the scene in front of them. One is Adrien, the ghost's head swaying alarmingly at the sudden stop, even as amusement gives light to slight exasperation. The other, the speaker, sports a ring of purple and black blushes around his throat, his voice wheezy, face flushed to the point of eerie similarity to his bright red hair. Their raised eyebrows and abrupt snap away from playfulness comes as little shock, considering the absolute explosion of gore surrounding the ghost at the centre of it all - and it really is everywhere, on faces and in hair and trickling past his ankles and forming a small pond at his feet - and the living standing in various states of discomfort around them.

"That just about sums it up," Marinette agrees. Brigitte sees half her class blink in surprise, and remembers that, before half a grade was lost and the classes were fused, her predecessor had a reputation for stumbling around the Agreste heir, even if she'd never seen it herself.

"I stumbled," Luka says by means of explanation, and the younger boys nod as if this is all the information they need.

"I guess we're calling it off, then," Adrien sighs. "What with the mess and the - well. I think someone threw up back there…"

Chloé blinks in surprise and then groans. "Ugh! This gets more ridiculous by the minute. I agree with you, Mari, we're never listening to Catboy again."

A few people in the know gasp, because, you know,  Chloé never agrees with Marinette, definitely doesn't call her Mari, and  definitely doesn't call Adrien 'Catboy'. "

"Hey! You all agreed," the aforementioned boy whines, crossing his arm and managing to look cutely petulant even with his ear nearly resting against his own shoulder.

The girl - 'Gami, Luka called her, Kagami if you believe the older students' notes - shakes her head in exasperation. "Where's Marc?"

Nathaniel's mouth twitches. "Considering the rules allowed us to use our environment? Probably waiting to throw a table at whoever's it and run."

Marinette sighs. "I must have been high to authorize this."

Kagami nods. "Myself too."

"Things have gone worse," Adrien points out. "I mean, we've died."

"Yeah, but we've never made a twelve-year-old sick on the pavement," Luka points out dryly. "Not on my bucket list at all."

"Your bucket list was three items long and one of them involved seeing Kitty Section have a real concert."

"I'm going to find my boyfriend,"  Chloé grumbles. "Don't wait up, losers."

"Yeah, I think I'll come too," Nathaniel says, shooting the others a glance. "Less chance of being hit by a flying table that way."

"He's going to be too embarrassed to come out now," Kagami remarks to Marinette.

"At least he probably remembered to stay invisible."

* * *

On one hand, there's burning iron, insides in the wrong places, the clear marks of violence. Far too much information. It's painfully clear how their class lost so many people. Dupain-Cheng wasn't lost to an akuma like the authorities said, she died at her own hands. Lila's dear Adrien did not go missing, someone or something broke his neck.  Chloé , Marc, and  Nathaniel  did not run like they said they must have - to die unmarked but for a crushed arm,  Chloé must have gone suddenly - falling, perhaps. Marc, from the few glimpses people catch, caught shrapnel to the neck and bled out, slowly if his ghostly injury is anything to go by. Few people even want to think about how exactly Nathaniel ended up wheezing and pink in the face and white at the fingertips, though  Félix regales his class with a rather nasty guess that involved explosions, concrete and the miracles of normal blood flow, effectively shutting them all up and making them think he's a murderer in the process. Most people assumed Couffaine was one of the many buried in the rockfalls, but with an injury from an object so blunt, he was obviously standing next to an explosion of sorts - and as for Tsurugi, a drowning was obvious as shoes made of waffles. They show up more and more frequently, sometimes appearing from nowhere to loom or linger, sometimes walking past as if they had never left, sometimes invisibly tormenting the unfortunate recipient of a golden, cursed flower bud, and seeing the dead so openly is harsh.

On the other hand, they laugh, they chatter, they live. Their eyes sparkle when they smiled, go starry when they cry. Brows furrow when angry and raise when surprised, breaths catch and are let out despite the lack of need.

And then, one day, Mr Pigeon crashes through the roof, closely followed by two costumed heroes, and when it's all over, the school is treated to the sight of seven forms lined up watching the aftermath as Rose Beetle straps her yo-yo back onto her waist and Panther irritably informs the newly deakumatized man of what transpired. Ivan had fallen down the stairs that day, Mlle. Bustier had tripped over a flying recorder (a male voice had muttered about not needing to stick to a theme, just stick your leg out), Lila and Kim (though the latter may have been collateral) nearly lost their heads after being attacked by a metre-ruler, and two young students in their first year had been subjected to a number of frankly terrifying sketches in what was most likely a double team, so few are hopeful for a peaceful resolution. They may have borne the image of old friends, but they were friends gone bitter in life, and in any case, Lila's acquaintance from Italy assured her all ghosts were malevolent.

The somehow-leader steps forwards. A population holds their breath.

And the dead girl smiles.

"Thank you."

Rose Beetle smiles knowingly, glances at Panther, who nods, and turns to the ghost. "It's my job."

Marinette looks tired but keeps smiling. "It was my fault. All of it - this -"

She indicates the six remaining ghosts and they jump to protest against the statement.

"No!"

"Marinette, not this again."

"Stop being so ridiculous, Mari!"

"It was never your fault."

Marinette shrugs and turns back to Rose Beetle. "In any case…"

She trails off, and Panther nudges Rose Beetle, jerking his head towards the ground, where bell-shaped, violet flowers (and haven't they become a part of life, now?) wrap around Marinette's feet, and both heroes nod in understanding.

There's a brief silence, and then Panther speaks. "It's nearly over, isn't it?"

Marinette sighs. "We've been becoming less corporeal for a week. We planned to… do things like this in life, but…"

"A shame," Panther says. "I was enjoying watching the idiots losing their minds."

There's a ripple of laughter through the ghosts. "Hey, it isn't exactly over. We're leaving enough trouble to blow this place through the roof," Adrien snorts.

"…Adrikins, that sounds like murder,"  Chloé says, and there's another round of giggles.

"Seriously, though," Marc pipes up, "Don't die. Paris… needs you."

"Mastermind of haunting says don't die,"  Chloé groans.

"Well, if you don't want him…"

"Nathaniel!"

"ANYWAY!" Kagami says loudly, bringing them back to Earth, "Since this is the end of everything, I believe this is the part when we tell our parents we love them. So tell my mother I love her, and also warn her that my boyfriend has grown a spine."

"Remind me why we didn't visit them personally?" Luka asks.

"Risk of heart attacks and subsequently joining us," Adrien says flatly. "Or, you know. Issues."

"This is turning into a trainwreck," Marc mumbles into his hands. "Can we start again?"

Marinette sighs and clears her throat. "Alright. Maman, Papa, I want you to know that I'm happy again, and I want you to be happy again too."

"Daddy, I love you. Mum, you're an awful parent. Also, I have two boys now, which is better than you did,"  Chloé says with a smirk.

"Hey! Don't use us as trophies!" Nathaniel exclaims indignantly.

"Shh, sweetie, you know I'm just trying to annoy her."

"…okay…well… publish my drawings, I guess. Love you. I, uh - keep up the work, Rose Beetle and Panther, and maybe get some temporary heroes? I - I think I'm traumatized by dying and that's not how it's meant to work…"

Marc shakes his head. "Yeah… uh… what he said…"

"Mum, you were terrible sometimes, but you tried," Luka says seriously. "And I appreciated it. Juleka, you're the best sister ever."

"And he had nothing to do with that incident with your face taped to every locker in the school," Adrien snorts.

There's a brief silence before Rose Beetle tentatively asks, "Are you going to… you know?"

"Oh, yeah, Dad, you can jump off the balcony, but don't hurt Nooroo while you're at it, right?"

There's a chorus of groans. "Catboy, why are you like this?"  Chloé wails.

"I'm paw-sitive my attitude is purr-fect," he quips, and Marinette twitches like she's ready to deck him.

"Anyway," she says slowly. "I don't know how much longer we'll be around here, but I do know people have live-streamed more than enough… I suppose we'll just fade away. So thank you, from me, and from all of us."

Rose Beetle smiles a mischievous grin. "No problem. Ladybug."


	5. An Epilogue of Sorts

No matter how frantically they try to do take the videos down, they're always shared, spread, saved faster. The world explodes as people tie together the grand conspiracy of the  CFD  ghosts and the mystery of the missing heroes. Photoshopped images, YouTube rants, long, winding explanations.

And does the evidence stack up. Whispers of a suicide, perfectly edited-on costumes, children unaccounted for.

It all comes out and it's ugly.

Papers are leaked, showing a long history of unwarranted punishment. Records make note of a child pushed to the side, a death knowingly left alone, never to be investigated. It doesn't take long for the internet to piece together the rest. Lies, turncoats, traitors, cruelty left to fester, supported. A toxic culture left to distil, one that tried to take again, before the hauntings started. Within days of the theory developing, the gates close for the last time as teachers and students are led away - some home, some in handcuffs.

Flowers, it seems, are well-documented in meaning, and when a small group of students insists there's more to it than gold crowns meaning doom, the internet picks it to pieces. Conspiracy leads to genuine discovery, hauntings and targets picked apart. Unlike the claims of the targeted, they were never innocent. Their own words tie them up in knots. It's sad to see. The messages are simple, but as one person notes, there's so much death.

An anonymous tip-off warns of creatures called 'kwami', linked to the Miraculouses Hawkmoth seems to covet so badly. It's vague, and barely enough to base a tip off, but as Panther casually mentions the next day, yellow roses are betrayal, if you believe the flower theory. Gabriel Agreste will always be known as the man who killed his own son, ostensibly to save his wife.

Over the next fortnight, the haunting slows. Visible bodies are seen for a week, walking around and talking and laughing. Footsteps and whispers are heard for another three days. They progress outside to the park, their voices echoing through the air even as their corporeal selves are absent. It's two days since the gates closed for the last time that the final flower blossoms in the spot closest to the school. A single black rose.

Farewell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the morbidly curious:  
> The akuma triggered the day after Marinette died was a highly explosive one that knocked down a number of buildings. I didn't bother giving it a name or cause, because it's a plot point. In any case, Adrien's death is obvious in this, Chloé gets blown off a building and smacks into another, crumpling her arm and liquefying her grey matter, Luka detransforms after a reset and gets hit from behind, Kagami is trapped by rubble in the Seine, Marc uses his shield and gets hit by shrapnel post-detransform, and Nathaniel _*Félix stands up*_ gets blown off his feet, trapped in rubble, and essentially strangled.  
> Edit: I think something went wrong here? Marc is meant to be a turtle? Please discount the original, thank you. I have fixed the error. I think.  
> Mentions of blood: 'Blood' 17, 'Gore' 2, 'Crimson' 3 (discounting Nathaniel's hair), 'scarlet' 1, 'deep red' 1, 'red' 3, 'brownish red' 1, 'wine' 2. Total: 30. Considering that was a secondary motif I'm not going to count the flowers.


	6. Art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I did an art. Will there be more art? I have no clue.

[Description: A girl, drawn from the waist up, fading away into the background at the hips. The background is a cool grey. The girl is in her early teens; her skin is light but not quite fair with a yellow-brown tint, her hair black with midnight blue highlights, and her eyes a deep but bright blue with periwinkle highlights. Her hair is parted in the centre, tied back into two pigtails - the one on the right is still tied, while the one of the left is slipping out onto her shoulder, revealing her hair to come to the top of the chest. Both are tied with bright red bows, which have long, trailing ends that blow rightwards in the wind. She has a fringe, swept to the right, and her face is framed by flyaways at either side. She is wearing a long-sleeved, white-blue shirt with a moderately wide, rounded neck. The ends of the sleeves are stained nearly to the elbow on both sides with red, more vivid at the wrists and fading to transparent as the colour transitions to a deeper, darker shade. She is crying, with tears visibly forming in her eyes and three in the process of running down her cheeks and chin, but her face is relaxed and absent of tension in the mouth and eyes. She looks downwards, towards the object in her hands, and her upper eyelids are drooping somewhat.

In her hands, which are clasped, vertically stacked one atop the other at her chest, she holds two roses - a large rose in full bloom, burgundy in colour, and one in the process of blooming, white and still a bud. Their green, thornless stems are clasped in her hands. Upon her head, arranged as if ornaments on a headband, are, from left to right, an asphodel lily, a section of twisted flax that grows a flower, a pure white orchid, and a white catchfly flower. The asphodel lily is a white flower with six almond-shaped petals, yellow strikes leading to the centre and visible stamens, sitting just above the (not visible) ear and tilted outwards. The flax flower is a cobalt blue flower, fairly glossy, at the centre of the head and pointed upwards. The orchid is a six-petaled flower pade up of three segments: a back segment with three petals shaped like almonds but rounder, a middle segment with two petals of the same shape pointing top left and top right, and a front segment with a single petal, the bottom and top similarly shaped to the other petals with a squared mid-section connecting them. The catchfly is a flower with a coloured centre and five near-rectangular petals, each bifurcated at the outside edge.]

# Flower Meanings:

 **Asphodel Lily:** 'My regrets follow you to the grave', Death _(Victorian Flower Language - I specifically used Language of Flowers, illustrated by Kate Greenaway, as my source)_

 **White Catchfly:** Betrayed _(Victorian Flower Language)_

 **Flax:** Domestic Industry, Fate, 'I feel your kindness' _(Victorian Flower Language)_

 **Burgundy Rose:** Unconscious Beauty ( _Victorian Flower Language)_

 **White Rosebud:** Girlhood _(Victorian Flower Language)_

 **Orchid:** Scolarship, Nobility, Integrity, Friendship _(Chinese Floriography)_

 **White Flower:** Mourning, Death _(Chinese Floriography)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the flax flower is too big.  
> No, I can't draw orchids.  
> =)


End file.
